


Medicine

by widdlewed



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: A for Alfred not Effort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Batfam fluff, Bruce is trying, Dick is Not Okay, Everyone knows it but no one can say it, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hospitalization, Implied but not outright said, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Kinda, Medical Inaccuracies, Medical Trauma, More Hopeful than Happy Ending, Motorcycle Incident, References to Depression, Suicide Attempt, Temporary Blindness, batfam, pain medicine addiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 19:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21894265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/widdlewed/pseuds/widdlewed
Summary: After an accident that renders Dick temporarily blind, the family come together to help him heal. Unfortunately, it isn't just his body that needs mending.For the Batfam Server Secret Santa fic exchange!
Relationships: Barbara Gordon & Dick Grayson, Cassandra Cain & Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson & Duke Thomas, Dick Grayson & Everyone, Dick Grayson & Jason Todd, Stephanie Brown & Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Damian Wayne, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson
Comments: 20
Kudos: 506
Collections: Dick & Ensemble, Roasted Server Secret Santa 2019, everybody loves dick





	Medicine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [made_of_memories](https://archiveofourown.org/users/made_of_memories/gifts).



> HAPPY HOLIDAYS! This is for you, HarshRheality, who was my Secret Santa!! I hope I did your prompt justice! Hope I gave you enough angst and fluff. I tried. Hope you enjoy it! <3
> 
> Prompt: Stop it! You're only making it worse!

Everything was a blur of sounds and colors. He heard the screech of metal, the shattering of glass, before pain exploded across his vision in a burst of black and white. 

He blinked, blobs and shapes forming in his vision as endless white assaulted his gaze. Water prickled sharply, cutting down his cheeks as he blinked more and more. The shapes weren’t clearing, shaping into solid masses he could identify. 

His heartbeat picked up, the gentle _badump badump badump badump_ steadily increasing into an erratic _THUMP-THUMP-THUMP_ as the white dulled into a heavy grey. He distantly heard the shrill wail of a machine, crying in tune to his thundering heart. 

He flailed, pain stabbing across his bones and skin as he forced his arms - or arm, since the other felt too heavy to move - up to his face. He clawed at the tubing and bandages, his breathing erratic as he fought against the endless waves of agony. His throat felt closed off, something foreign and uncomfortable scraping against the walls of his throat with each gag and gasp. 

A breathing tube, some part of his mind deduced. He had a breathing tube in. It hurt. It hurt so badly. 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Someone shouted and two different set of hands pinned him down by the shoulders. “Dick, it’s okay! Dick!”

_Tim,_ some soft, soothed part of his mind whispered. That was Tim’s voice. In front of him a black blob filled his view, nothing more than clumps of shadows against that dull grey background. It had the vague outline of Tim, Dick determined. 

He tried to speak, gagging as his larynx bobbed weakly against the constricting tube. He needed it out. Wanted it out. He needed it out _now_. 

“Hey, hey, calm down, okay? We’re calling a doctor right now. Just - _Jesus_ , Dick, you need to chill for a second!” His body thrashed and exploded into liquid fire as he struggled to claw at the tube in his throat. “Stop it! You’re only making it worse!”

Anger, sultry and choking and searing, flushed through his body at Tim’s words. What the fuck was he supposed to do, then? He couldn’t see, everything hurt, and he had no fucking clue how he ended up with a breathing tube in him in the first place!

He tried to raise a hand to rub at his eyes again, chest huffing in annoyance as smaller, warmer hands pressed his wrist down onto the crisp sheets. Damian, he decided. The hands were calloused and a bit crooked from broken fingers never set properly. Slender and nimble, tiny enough to wrap around his wrist without actually entirely circling it with his thumb and middle finger. Definitely Damian’s hands. 

“A doctor will be here soon, Grayson,” Damian’s voice was a faint whisper. Something about how his words trembled as he spoke made Dick’s chest seize tightly. Dick struggled to twist his hand around, griping Damian’s hand in his in a limp hold. 

He hated how dark everything seemed at that moment. The shifting shadows and grey blobs did nothing to calm his pounding heart, each beat synching with his drowning mind. He couldn’t remember what happened. He didn't know why he was in the hospital. Everything hurt. But everything was numb. He was cold. He was flushed, unbearably hot against the hands pinning him down and the casts weighing down his lips. 

Everything hurt and nothing made sense. 

What felt like an eternity passed before the door opened. Damian’s hands retracted from him and he was embarrassed to say he whined at the lost contact. 

And then someone forgein was entering his space and he stiffened as a bright light cut through the grey. 

The light flickered. On. Off. On. Off. Light. Grey. Light. Grey. Dick felt his eyes water more than saw the blurriness and he ducked his head away from the intruding light. It was a flashlight, his mind determined. A flashlight was being flashed in his eyes and he could barely see it. 

His hands trembled as his good hand fisted into the blankets covering him. He could barely see a fucking flashlight. 

“Mr. Grayson,” the doctor spoke, her voice gentle, “do you remember what happened?” 

The silence that answered her made Dick flush an ugly color of shame. Because he didn't remember. He couldn’t talk, anyways. The breathing tube was an annoyance that continued to fester and itch against his swollen muscles and flesh. 

“We’ll get this tube out of you in a second,” the doctor continued and her blotchy, static-like form moved away from his grey vision. “You won’t be able to talk for at least a day afterwards but that’s fine. You need to rest, Mr. Grayson.”

A pause, an intake of breath, and finally, “You were in a motorcycle accident. A car ran a red light and collided with you. You were incredibly lucky to have survived with the amount of damage you suffered.”

“He might calm down if you list his injuries,” Duke’s soft voice spoke up and Dick jolted in the bed. How long had Duke been in the room? Rather, who was all in the room with him? He knew Tim and Damian. Who else? 

The doctor hesitated before she cleared her throat. “You were thrown off your bike on impact.” Sounded about right. Car vs bike usually ended up in car’s favor. “You’ve broken your collarbone, your left arm, dislocated your right shoulder, punctured your lungs from broken ribs, broke your right femur, suffered a severe concussion, had some bleeding in your brain but nothing too worrying.”

How is blood in his brain _not_ worrying?

Another pause. “You also received large amounts of cuts along your face from your shattered helmet visor. Most are superficial but a few will leave lasting scars.” 

Not too much of a bother. Dick had his fair amount of scars. They were barely a concern. 

The doctor gave a hum as the door opened again. Dick’s mind stuttered and faltered as everything started to blur again. If his grey, grainy vision was bad now, it got worse as darkness began to creep along the edges. He was tired. He was ready to close his eyes and sleep for a year. 

Instead, he was instructed to cough and the next five minutes of his life to get the tube out probably were some of the worse he’d ever experienced. He nearly threw up as he gagged around the tube, feeling the slimey plastic slide out of his body. Water prickled his eyes as he spat and coughed, hunching forward with the help of two different sets of hands. One, he knew was Tim’s. The other set was foreign - a nurse, he figured. 

Once the breathing tube was out, he was gently lowered back onto the bed, though he was propped up on pillows to incline himself a bit. He swallowed continuously, clearing his throat over the sore, swollen walls. God, that had been _unpleasant_.

  
  
  


“Mr. Grayson, I’m going to touch your hand now.” He immediately felt her hand cover his good hand. Her touch was cold, her fingers slim and brittle. He wondered how old she was. She sounded older, closer to Leslie’s age. “Now, can you squeeze my hand for me? As strong as you can.”

He did so. She gave a pleased hum and then asked him to relax his grip. He did. “Squeeze my hand if you can see how many fingers I’m holding up.” 

He figured she must have raised her hand up. He couldn’t see the fingers though, just the grey blob in his field of view fidgeting. 

Silence. 

Something detached from the blob, moving from side to side. Dick couldn’t follow it. His head felt split open as he tried to follow the floating mass moving right to left, left to right, and his eyes watered as he forced himself to try. 

More silence. 

“Mr. Grayson, squeeze once for yes, twice for no, understand?” Dick squeezed her hand once in acknowledgement. The drifting mass disappeared. He wondered absently, if it had been her hand or arm. “Can you see me?”

Well, now that was a trick question. Dick stared into the grey, dull abyss, unable to properly answer. Because, _technically_ , he could, just not clear. 

She made some sort of noise he couldn’t read. 

“We’re going to have to run some tests now that he’s awake.” Her voice sounded a bit far away - like her head was turned. “His eyes aren’t responding to stimuli and he was unable to follow my hand with his eyes.”

“What does that mean?” 

The machines connected to Dick wailed at how sudden his heartbeat ramped up at Bruce’s voice. Bruce was in the room? Why hadn’t he said anything?! Here Dick was, floating in this weird limbo of being aware and lost to everything, and Bruce was just silent this entire time?! 

“Mr. Grayson, it’s okay!” The doctor pressed a cold hand to his clammy forehead and Dick wanted nothing more than to scream. “Please try to calm down. You’re safe, you’re fine. I know this is scary-”

Scary? _Scary_? Scary was loading into the back of a stranger’s car after just washing the blood of his parents off his hands. Scary was hysterical laughter or poisonous plants. Scary was a gunshot whizzing over his head, embedding into a mad-man and raindrops on rooftops. Scary was burying too many siblings to be healthy, shedding too many tears to be sane. 

This? This was an annoyance more than anything. 

“What does this mean?” Damian’s voice echoed his father’s only his words were short and clipped while Bruce’s were controlled in his concern. Dick screwed his eyes shut, reclining his head back as his skull threatened to spill over and pour his brains contents out. 

“Right now Mr. Grayson’s eyes aren’t responding to light like they should,” the doctor explained. Her voice was beginning to drift. The sounds around him were beginning to fade as he sunk back into the darkness. “We won’t know for certain until we run tests but…”

And he was gone. 

* * *

Apparently when he was in the accident, he hit his head enough to do some severe damage. _Apparently_. Dick honestly didn't listen to her explanation, only catching words like ‘blood clot’, ‘stroke’, and ‘impaired’. He just replayed the diagnosis over and over. 

Blind. He was temporarily blind. Well, not fully blind since his vision was picking up small amounts of light and colors, but enough to have his license (both driving and ride) revoked and have to wear special sunglasses that gave his eyes a break. 

The doctors reassured him it would be temporary. Already the grey was beginning to lift, not three days after he woke up. He could vaguely make out his hand when it was right in front of his face, pressed to his nose. That was better than when he first woke up. 

Dick found out he’d been unconscious for two full weeks, having slipped into a coma from the swelling in his brain. Luckily, as the doctor said, it hadn’t been _too bad_ so besides his stroke and the blood clot that caused his temporary blindness, there weren’t any lingering worries. 

After that initial first day awake, he became more aware of the visitors he received throughout the day. Tim and Damian were constants, one of them always in the room when he woke up. He could tell by their smells and their voices, even more so since Damian allowed himself moments of weakness to touch his wrist or brush his bangs out of his face for him. 

Tim was always there in the mornings when Dick woke up. He still couldn’t talk, voice unable to even punch out a hoarse whisper. His little brother didn't seem to mind. They’d spend the time in the hospital room in silence, the TV playing some cheesy comedy while Tim worked on paperwork or tried to secretly work on casefiles. Dick could tell by the flipping of papers and the tapping of his pen, a habit Tim did when he was thinking too fast to properly process the information he was reading. 

Tim was always there in the mornings before Dick had his pain medication. He was mortified and ashamed at having to have one of his brothers seem him silently cry from the overwhelming pain and the insistent itch beneath his skin. Tim was always there in the mornings, able to catch Dick at his lowest before he had the strength to muster up a front for his other visitors. 

Damian would have stayed by Dick’s side 24/7 if he didn't have obligations to school and his nightly activities. But when he did show up after school, he stayed until close to 9 or 10 at night, all but forcefully dragged out by Duke or Stephanie. 

Dick was touched and proud of how far Damian had grown, no longer shying away from his emotions and wants and needs. He wanted to be by Dick’s side the entire recovery. He didn't think it a weakness to slip into bed and nestle up under Dick’s right arm, mindful of his bandages and casts. He didn't feel embarrassed or disgusted to talk in soft whispers to Dick, telling him about his day or the latest villain they locked back up. 

He’d sketch Dick out, during the days Dick didn't want to be touched and Damian read it in the sullen air. He’d explain how Dick’s eyes would drift and how the robin-egg blue was just the tiniest bit foggy and how Damian wanted to capture the color and appearance on paper to show to Dick when he healed properly. 

Duke, in the week Dick had already spent awake in the hospital (with many more weeks to go), had only visited maybe twice. After the diagnosis, he almost seemed scared to visit. During the two times he did stop by, he only stayed for an hour before leaving. Dick didn't hold it against him - they weren’t as close as Dick was with the others. Duke was a good kid but he kept a wall around him when it came to the eldest. Dick didn't fault him for it. 

Cass, Stephanie, and Barbara visited intermittently. Barbara trimmed his shaggy hair for him, snickering the whole time a nurse scolded her for it. Cass would just perch along his bed and hold his hand, finding no discomfort in the silence. Stephanie would talk enough for the two of them, unperturbed by Dick’s silence. 

His voice came and went in raspy little whistles, failing him if he spoke for longer than a sentence at a time. He’d have to cough and swallow after almost every three words, his throat still scarred to hell and inflamed. He hated it and disliked when the doctors or nurses tried to make him speak. He hated hearing himself. Hated hearing how helpless and weak he sounded. Hated how exhausted and pathetic it made him feel. 

So he rarely spoke to his siblings when they visited. 

Much to his disappointment and great hurt, Bruce only visited once after he woke up. Tim tried to excuse the man’s absence, saying he’d spent nearly every second by Dick’s side during his coma and was now recharging from hours of lost sleep and stress. Dick understood. He knew Bruce loved him. 

Didn't mean it didn't hurt any less that he didn't visit him. He missed his father. 

He wanted his Dad. 

* * *

During the nights when a fever spiked and sleep escaped him in flushed tendrils and aching whines, he’d imagine a hand running through his sweat-slicked bangs and a rough voice humming lullabies. During the nights when his eyes throbbed and his head was caving into itself with each beat of his heart, he imagined calloused, firm hands pressing wet rags to his cheeks as he sobbed into the darkness. 

It had to be his imagination. Hallucinations from fevers and pain. He was imagining the familiar scent of cinnamon and gunpowder. His mind was fabricating the sound of Jason’s raspy voice as he whispered song after song to soothe Dick into a fitful sleep. He was longing for some form of comfort that his brain was supplying it in hazy illusions of Jason adjusting his body to be more relaxed as he ran his fingers through his hair. 

Every night, since he awoke, he hallucinated Jason visiting him. But it was only in the darkness of the late night hours, during the Devil’s Hour, that the illusions assaulted him and left him a broken mess of helplessness and self-hatred. He’d try to curl onto his side, fighting against the pain of mending ribs and mending bones, and confess his sins. How he wished he’d been there for Jason. How he failed Tim. Probably ruined Damian more than he helped. Took his sisters for granted. Was too distant and uncaring to Duke. How he was poison, toxic to everything and everyone. 

How, two weeks later, he remembered the entire incident that resulted in his hospitalization. He confessed, muffled into his pillow as the illusion of Jason rubbed soft circles against his back, how he’d seen the car coming. Saw it run the red light. Calculated his chances of avoiding the collision. Could have avoided the entire thing. 

How he didn't. How he let the car hit him. How he’d hoped, in the darkest recesses of his mind, that he wouldn’t have woken up. 

During these nights, when the pain was too much and his dose of medication was weaning from fear of addiction, his words were broken and barely whispers. They cracked and carved into him with crooked little claws, tearing him open and exposing him to his mind’s fabrication of Jason. And this Jason, an illusion his fever-riddled mind created, would just listen. Listen to his choked back admissions of loneliness, of anger, of fear. 

And when the sun began to rise, his body would win against his thrashing mind and he’d slip away into unconsciousness. And his fever-Jason would be gone by the time a nurse would wake him up for a dose of pain medication and some fever suppressants. 

* * *

“You need to see him.”

Bruce looked away from the computer, the screen showing the hacked security feed of Dick’s hospital room. Oracle had set it up for him, knowing he was too much of a coward to step another foot in the hospital room while Dick was awake. 

He paused the recorded feed on Jason’s face, the second eldest child’s dark eyes on Dick’s curled up form. Tim’s eyes traced off the grainy feed of the two, his eyebrows pinched.

“I...can’t,” Bruce spoke softly. He turned to fully face his third child. He ran a hand through his greying hair, feeling like a good patch of white had sprung up in the last month from how much stress his oldest caused him. “I’m… I don’t know what I should say.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Tim argued as he took a step forward. He stopped arms length from Bruce, eyes like steel as he regarded the man. “You just need to be with him. He needs his dad, Bruce. He needs you.”

“He can’t even see me,” Bruce whispered softly. He felt ugly, confessing that. He hated how wide Dick’s eyes had seemed, looking at them but not _seeing them_. When he’d awaken, Bruce had been right there and Dick hadn’t even known. He’d seen through him, past him, and the fear that clawed at Bruce at the idea that it was permanent was suffocating. 

Because there was still a small possibility Dick wouldn’t ever regain his vision. There was still a small little percentage that the stroke did lasting damage that couldn’t be corrected. And that scared Bruce. That scared Bruce so much before Dick was the embodiment of sunshine and life.

If he couldn’t see it anymore, how could he hope to be the physical representation of it? 

Tim scowled and crossed his arms over his chest, standing his ground as Bruce looked up at him from his hands. “It’s temporary, Bruce. It’s temporary.” He repeated the word, trying to drill it into the man’s stubborn head. “He’s going to bounce back, B. He always does.”

But what if he doesn’t? Bruce doesn’t voice it even though everyone in the Manor knows it’s an unspoken concern of theirs. It hung in the air like a noose ready to strangle them all - that underlying fear that Dick wouldn’t bounce back. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was what broke the camel’s back. 

“I can’t,” Bruce repeated and turned back to resume the feed of Jason’s nightly visits. His second eldest tried to play like he didn't care for his family - for his siblings - but Bruce now had the perfect blackmail to argue differently. 

* * *

“They said you’re becoming addicted to the pain medication.” 

Dick looked away from the window. His vision was coming back to him slowly. He could make out the blue sky and fuzzy little shapes of the white clouds. The night sky was a black mass of nothing, the stars too faint and too small for his weakened vision to pick up. People were becoming human shaped, small features like hair color and eye-color making them up when before it was just blobs. 

Bruce stood at the door, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. Dick scooted a bit in bed, as much of a silent invitation for the man to join him as it could be. Bruce wavered before he walked further into the room. Damian looked up from his sketchbook, eyes narrowed protectively. 

Bruce felt his chest swell with pride - here was his flesh and blood, regarding him like a threat to Dick’s happiness and safety. Any other time he’d be insulted or wounded. Here, thought? Here, he was proud. His child loved Dick so much. He was happy to see it. 

“That’s-” a raspy cough “-that’s what they say. I don’t. I don’t think so.” His eyes were trained on Bruce, a bit glassy and sunken in with dark bruises. Bruce stepped closer. He sat at the foot of the bed, patting at Dick’s ankle gently. 

“You’ve had worse,” Bruce agreed softly. “You’ve been on cocktails of painkillers and anesthetics before and never grew any sort of reliance. Why would you now?” Despite how quiet his words were, the weight of the accusation towards his eldest was as loud as a scream. 

Damian bristled from the adjacent couch, hands on his pencil tightening until it was white-knuckled and the wood splintered. 

“Hey Dami,” Dick called and Damian was at his side in an instant, hand over his cast-covered left arm, “can you - can you sneak me a pop? I’m dying - dying for some sugar.” Damian searched his face, lips pursing at the clear excuse to dismiss the child. Slowly though, with another glance at his father, the child nodded and left. 

“He’s a good kid,” Bruce mused aloud. He smiled faintly to himself. “Reminds me of how you used to act when I’d be bedridden during your Robin years.” 

Dick’s eyes slid to the side, unfocused and expression blanking. Bruce mentally winced. He couldn’t have held back on that comment, could he? 

“I’m not-” a large inhale “-I’m not addicted.” 

“No,” Bruce agreed as he pat Dick’s ankle again. “You’re just trying to escape, aren’t you?” 

Dick had two more weeks, Bruce mentally chided himself. He could hold off on this conversation until the man was back at home, safe in the confines of the Manor. He had two more weeks of blissful ignorance, believing everything was alright and that his siblings didn't know something was going on. 

Tim could see it. See it in the way Dick would stare listlessly out the window, his mood nose diving with rapid speed with each passing day. See it in a way that when he went to get Dick spare clothes, the apartment he lived in was bare and lifeless. Like a hotel - temporary and without any sign of someone living there. 

Damian could see it in how Dick’s smile were brittle and empty, cheap imitations of the smiles the young child learned to crave once his Batman was ripped from his side. See it in how his trained eyes would catch those trembling hands pressing into healing ribs and exhale against the stimulated pain. 

Cass could read his emotions, not needing to read against how loud he screamed and broadcasted the agony and darkness of his mind. Stephanie picked it up on his grunts and half-assed excuses. Barbara knew it in his body language, spent from years learning each and every little tic the man had to know when he was hiding. When he was lying. 

Bruce knew it from nights the man before him would feverishly spill his heart out, mind to riddled with the delirious temperatures to even think for a second that the other man in his darkened hospital room was real and not a fantasy. Heard his whispered pleas and secrets and stored them away to address at a safer time.

This was not a safer time. This was nowhere near a safer time but Bruce just couldn’t keep his big mouth shut. Rage, searing and sultry, coursed through his veins at the thought of his son suffering. At the thought that he could be hurt so deeply, so violently, and there was nothing Bruce could do to help him. Protect him. Heal him. 

“Get out.” Dick turned his head away. The words were punched out with such clarity, you’d never think he still struggled to speak a complete sentence without stopping to cough. 

Bruce didn't have to be told twice. He was familiar with Dick’s behavior when it came to avoiding confrontation. Denial, then cold numbness, then the misplaced rage, before settling on blank indifference. He was at the misplaced rage stage, already past the first two stages when it came to Bruce. He always started with rage nowadays when it came to Bruce. 

He slipped past Damian, the child lingering in the hallway with a can of Coca-Cola in his limp grasp. His eyes shone in understanding before he moved back to the room. 

Bruce left the hospital. Two more weeks, his mind chanted relentlessly. Two more weeks. 

* * *

“Bruce thinks you’re suicidal,” Tim spoke as he flipped the channel on the TV, bored with the comedy series he’d put on and deciding to see if he could find Law & Order or something similar. Those usually played on every single channel in a hospital, didn't they? 

“What?” Dick looked up from his enlarged picture cards, the images blown up wide to help his eyes slowly adjust to shapes and colors again. His vision was coming back with a new speed, making the Manor residents breath sighs of relief in the recesses of the Cave or on patrol where Dick couldn’t hear them. 

“Bruce,” Tim repeated. “He thinks you’re suicidal.” He stopped on a rerun of Bones and dropped the bed remote onto the mattress by Dick’s cast-covered thigh. His eyes tore from the screen to meet Dick’s wide gaze. 

“I’m-” a thick swallow “-I’m not.” His expression was a bit haunted though. A bit pale and his eyes quickly fell away from Tim. Tim gave a neutral hum and leaned his elbow against the bed, cupping his chin in his palm. 

“I looked at the footage of the accident. From the street cameras,” Tim spoke nonchalantly as his eyes stubbornly trained on the TV overhead. “You had more than enough time to avoid being hit.”

The cards scattered to the floor and Tim slowly turned his head down to see Dick’s hand trembling. His eyes were resolutely trained down on his lap, nostrils flaring. His expression was darkening, twisting with an ugliness that Tim usually associated with Jason or Stephanie on a bad day. 

“I think you are too,” Tim said without much infliction, standing from the chair he’d dragged over. He moved away from Dick, a habit of wariness for the acrobat even though he was stuck in that bed by cords and tubes and casts. “You don’t hide it as well as you think you do, Dick.” 

He left after that, not wanting to hear any half-assed excuses or lies. Dick stayed silent, the heart monitor connected to him picking up its rhythm. 

* * *

He couldn’t sleep. He sat up in his bed, the night lights of the city casting rainbow streaks through his hospital room as he sat in the darkness. The curtains were drawn over the wide windows that bordered his door and the TV was off, leaving him in a weird sense of disconnect. 

He stared blankly at the wall in front of him, eyes now healed enough to focus on the scrawled letters on the whiteboard to show who his nurse for the shift was and who his doctor was. He didn't acknowledge the window opening or the figure crawling in. He didn't acknowledge the window closing or the shift of weight along his mattress. It was only when Jason took off his red helmet did he speak. 

“You’re not a fever dream.” Dick turned his head to meet Jason’s Lazarus Pit Green eyes, the color swirling through his dark blue until it was an eerie glowing hue of taint. Dick never really noticed how they glowed in the darkness, a supernatural effect of being resurrected by waters not of mortal creation. 

“Nope.” Jason set his helmet down on the chair left by the bed and kicked his feet up, shimmying his way until he shouldered Dick to the edge of the bed. “I’m as fucking real as can be, Golden Boy. Not my fault you thought I was some fucking hallucination.” 

Jason’s hands drummed out a beat on his thighs. “No wonder they think you’re addicted to pain meds. You thought I was some fucked up fabrication of your stupid brain.” A snort. 

“I told you about a lot of things.” He should be terrified by that truth. By the realization that Jason had so much leverage over him. Instead, he felt tired. So bone tired he could even muster up an ounce to care. 

“Yep.” Jason moved to pillow his head with his arm, nearly elbowing Dick in the face. “So? You think you’re the only one who has problems? I ain’t no snitch and I don’t really give a fuck if you meant to get hit or not.” 

Lies. Dick could see his limp arm still tapping musical notes into the meat of his thigh. A nervous tic of Jason’s, when he tried to smother his anxiety. Lies. Jason came to him night after night to chase away his demons, or to sooth him when they had to deep a talon in him. 

Dick closed his eyes, shuddering as the darkness enveloped him. He was terrified to admit that he hated sleeping. Hated willingly going to sleep. Hated how the idea of cutting off his vision made him scared, worried that when he opened his eyes back up, there would continue to be black. He hated the idea that his vision could disappear from him. He’d never be the same. Sure, he could learn to fight and patrol and kick ass blind but it’d be such a struggle. 

He ducked his head, lips trembling. “I’m scared to go to sleep.” It felt right to whisper his confession to Jason. “The pain meds make me too fuzzy to be scared.” 

Jason was silent as was routine at this point as he waited for Dick to continue. 

“I’m scared that if I go to sleep, I’ll wake up and won’t be able to see anything anymore.” His hand trembled as he ran it through his hair. It was getting shaggy again. It was greasy and shaggy and he just wanted to shave himself bald at this point. He hated everything. Hated the sponge-baths they gave him. Hated his restricted diet. Hated himself. 

“I- I know it’s stupid to be scared of that.” The laugh he forced out was wet and cracked. “I mean, after everything I’ve faced, how can it be the idea of being blind the thing that keeps me up at night?” He moved his hand to rub at his bruised eyes. The cuts and scrapes were nothing but shrinking scabs at this point, save for the stitches along his temple. His nails dragged over the scabs, picking at them. Jason’s free hand stopped drumming and instead reached over to secure the scratching appendages. 

“It’s a rational fear,” Jason argued as he squeezed Dick’s hand. The silence fell over them like a sand-filled blanket. It grounded the two. “Everyone has their fears, Dickie. Look at Bruce. His entire existence is based on fears that people would scoff at.” 

Jason adjusted his lounging position as he lowered Dick’s hand to his lap. Dick exhaled loudly and stared at the ceiling. 

“It was scary.” Jason’s eyes flickered over to Dick at the soft-spoken words. “Maybe a minute - maybe a minute tops I was clinically dead.” 

What? Jason shifted on the bed, turning to face Dick again. He hadn’t heard anything about Dick flatlining on the surgery table. The Replacement or Stephanie hadn’t mentioned anything about it. 

“It scared me, when it first happened and the months after. I was dead - I _died_. He let go of me and for a minute, my heart didn't beat.” Dick’s hand fisted on the blanket as he squeezed his eyes shut hard until starts exploded in colorful arrays against the black. “But then - then I started to think about it, y’know? When things got to be too much. I thought - I thought about how for that minute, everything just stopped. No thoughts, no feelings, no bright lights, no longing faces beckoning me with expectations. Everything just stopped.”

Something dense and cold formed in Jason’s chest. Because he knew that feeling well. Felt it every day, wondering if it was a mistake he had a second chance. But Dick - the Golden Boy, the Robin they’d all been forced into the mold of, shouldn’t feel that way. Shouldn’t have ever felt like that or know how that feels. 

“When?” Jason’s voice sounded too loud in the quiet of the room. 

“Before I was put undercover.” 

Jason’s mind racked through the files he’d stolen from Bruce about that after Dick resurfaced. That was supposed to be fake. His death had been faked, right?

Right?

“It was real.” Jason sucked in a breath. “It was real.” Dick shrugged weakly before he opened his eyes. 

“After a while, I guess I kind of started to crave that sense of nothingness.” 

The two spent the rest of the night in silence, Dick struggling to keep his eyes open as panic gripped his heart and held it in a vice grip and Jason simmering in rage that made his eyes burn acid. 

* * *

“I think I need help.” 

Bruce paused in closing the hospital door. It was one of the rare days that Dick was alone, his visitors growing fewer and fewer as his mood darkened worse and worse. 

“With what?” Bruce asked, heart seizing in his chest as Dick’s clear eyes met his full-on. 

“I think you know, Bruce,” Dick whispered as he shuffled over and patted the space beside him insistently. Bruce wavered for a second before moving, sitting stiffly beside his oldest. “I think-” he licked his lips “-I think I need some serious help.”

For all his children struggled with emotions and confrontation of the emotional variety, never let it be said they didn't know how to be rational and blunt. They were raised to spot a victim, no matter what ailments, and how to handle them properly. They were trained with careful eyes for signs and triggers. They were taught how to comfort and how to help. 

“Okay.” They were leagues better at handling this than Bruce. Dick most of all. Bruce swallowed the lump in his throat as he slowly and gently drew Dick’s head to rest against his shoulder. For all the words he wasn’t speaking, he hoped his actions translated through clearly. “Okay.” 

Dick sniffled and burrowed into his clothed shoulder, breathing in that cologne Bruce hated but everyone else enjoyed and that stark muskiness of the Cave that clung to him like a second layer of skin. 

“Okay,” he echoed. The words fell flat and heavy into his lap. His tears made his vision blur and he hated how his stomach clenched at the unfocused. “Okay.”

* * *

“This is stupid,” Dick grumbled as Jason continued to laugh, pushing Dick’s wheelchair through the Manor door. 

“It’s fucking hilarious!” Jason cackled as Damian followed at his heels, Dick’s bag clenched tightly in his arms. Behind them, Tim and Bruce trailed after. 

“What’s funny?” Stephanie asked as Dick slumped back in the wheelchair with a scowl. “What’s with the chair? I thought he could use crutches.”

“He kept falling,” Jason laughed loudly, putting the locks on the chair. “He looked like a bumbling idiot with the crutches and the doctors pitied him so much that they signed for him to use a wheelchair.” He snickered as Dick glared at him. 

“Oh wow,” Barbara laughed as she entered the main entryway, Alfred following at a reserved pace. “Look at you, Boy Blunder.”

“Shut it,” Dick hissed without any heat. He’d been discharged after his vision had cleared back up, good as new and with only mild inconveniences. His vision still spotted and the doctors predicted it would never properly go back to how it was so Bruce made silent plans to design glasses to help him with his vision faltered. His femur was still in a cast and his arm in a sling and he’d always have metal pins in his collar-bone but other than that, he had a clean bill of physical health. 

His mental and emotional health was a different matter but for now, it was something to celebrate. 

“We’re glad you’re home,” Bruce spoke as he took Jason’s place in pushing Dick through the halls. “Alfred has cooked up your favorite.”

Dick sat silent, pensive, before he let a small smile show through. “I’m happy I’m home too.” Not in his lonely little apartment, cut off from the world, from the warmth he craved. Behind them, Jason hollered and Damian spat an insult. “I - I missed this.” 

“We missed you too.” Bruce ruffled his hair, a nostalgic gesture, and leaned down to press a kiss to the crown of his head. Dick flushed and slumped down, only bringing slight itchiness across his body. 

He still had a lot to heal and it would be a slow and painful process, but for now, it was fine. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> https://discord.gg/hSBMqJk


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